N. Korea Takes Pride in Arsenal

But if there is one undisputed point of pride in this country with a per capita income among the lowest in the world, it is the nuclear bomb.

To many North Koreans, the development of nuclear weapons vaults them into an exclusive club with the United States and China and the other great powers of the world.

"We're a nuclear power. We're not like Iraq, or Yugoslavia or Afghanistan. We can defend ourselves," boasted Kim Myong Song, a 30-year-old North Korean who was standing guard on the hiking trails at Mt. Kumgang, one of the few parts of the reclusive country open to visitors.

Pounding his fist in the air, Kim said that North Korea's nuclear weapons could demolish U.S. interests in the event of a war.

"We will turn the U.S. bases in South Korea into ashes. No U.S. base will be safe in Guam, Japan, Hawaii. Even the mainland United States won't be safe," he said.

"If we say we have nuclear weapons, you better believe it -- we do," said another guard, a 34-year-old in tinted glasses who gave his name as Mr. Kim.

U.S. intelligence agencies have believed for several years that North Korea has developed a nuclear bomb. But there is disagreement about whether the government in Pyongyang can mount it on a missile and whether those missiles could reach any part of the United States.

Brian Myers, an academic and literary critic who studies North Korean literature and media, says nuclear weapons have become a key element of domestic propaganda, used by the government to convince an impoverished population that they are as well-off as anybody else despite increasing evidence to the contrary.

"Nuclear weapons are crucial to the North Koreans' sense of dignity, especially vis-a-vis the South. Without them, they are mere beggars," said Myers, who teaches in South Korea.

The North Koreans' abiding pride in their nuclear weapons is one reason it is so difficult for the government to barter them away. For more than a year, Pyongyang has boycotted six-nation talks on its nuclear program, despite offers of a modern-day Marshall Plan to rebuild the country in exchange for denuclearization.